Hi everyone, We are excited to publish a new research report from the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT <https://cdt.org/about/>) entitled "Real Time Threats: Analysis of Trust and Safety Practices for Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSEA) Prevention on Livestreaming Platforms <https://cdt.org/insights/real-time-threats-analysis-of-trust-and-safety-practices-for-child-sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-csea-prevention-on-livestreaming-platforms/>." We examine the range of trust and safety tools and practices that platforms and third-party vendors are developing and deploying to safeguard livestreaming services, with a special focus on CSEA prevention. These are critically important given the impacts on children, parents, and their communities. We identified three main approaches: * Design based approaches — Steps taken before a user is able to stream, such as implementing friction and verification measures intended to make it more difficult for users, or suspicious users, to go live. * Content analysis approaches — Various forms of manual or automated content detection and analysis that can work on video, audio, and text as content is livestreamed. * Signal based approaches - Interventions based on the behavioral characteristics and metadata of user accounts. While they can be useful these approaches raise significant concerns. First, there is a general trend to eschew transparency and clarity in how these systems operate and are deployed, ostensibly to prevent bad actors from circumventing them, but potentially to the detriment of survivors, users, policymakers, and other stakeholders. Second, and related to the first point, it is almost impossible to determine how effective these approaches are, what gaps they leave, whether they result in overmoderation of legitimate content, and how well they serve the needs of all stakeholders. Third, these approaches introduce significant security, privacy, free speech, and other human rights risks that can undermine the safety of the minors that they are meant to protect as well as that of users in general. We conclude with recommendations on how to address these concerns. You can find the PDF of the "Real Time Threats …" report here <https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CDT-Research-Real-Time-Threats-hqp-final.pdf>which includes our policy recommendations to address this problem, or read threads on Twitter <https://x.com/CenDemTech/status/1859629915261247928>, Bsky <https://bsky.app/profile/cendemtech.bsky.social/post/3lbhtxol4t22h>, Linkedin <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/center-for-democracy-%26-technology_real-time-threats-analysis-of-trust-and-activity-7265395814884118530-BwrK>, and Mastodon <https://techpolicy.social/@CenDemTech/113521808366045686>. Please feel free to share and we welcome your feedback. take care, Dhanaraj -- *Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>* **dthakur@cdt.org | **+1 202 407 8849